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Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Alien Quilt

Here's a quilt I made almost 5 years ago...well, I made the top anyway. I got the pattern at market back in 2007 and thought it was so cute. Even though I wasn't making it for anyone specific, I quickly put the top together. Then I hung it in a closet and wasn't in a real big hurry to quilt it since I never found anyone to give it to. Well I finally got it out a couple of months ago and quilted it up for my cute neighbor Teresa. Her husband died several years back and every year she does a big fish fry in his honor to raise money for scholarships to a local high school. They have a ton of bucket raffles with pretty cool prizes. She invited us last year, but it was just a few days before, and I was bummed I didn't have enough time to make a quilt for the raffle. I told her I would make her one for this year. Then this year rolled around and I was afraid I wouldn't have time to finish anything if I had to start from scratch so I decided to quilt the alien quilt and give her that since it was so cute...and half done already!

If this quilt looks a tiny bit familiar, it's probably because I have made 2 of these...the other one was a baby quilt that you can see in this post...I actually like the baby quilt a little better since I miniaturized it and changed the layout a bit--added a black and white checkered sashing/border and a rocket ship applique to it. Anyway, this is an Amy Bradley design called Planetary Party. (UPDATE 9/9/15: I just found out that the designer is discontinuing this pattern! :( so your best bets for finding it are probably ebay and etsy.com). I guess it is a block of the month type pattern, but take it from me...you can make it in a week. I just love all the little aliens. I used to make lots of cutesy little character appliques back in the day, but I don't really anymore...so it was fun to relive the glory days while I was quilting this. I decided to quilt a different pattern in the background of each block...so here are close-ups of all the blocks...

swirls...

lightning/zig-zags...

I'm not really sure what these are... ;)

Ooh...this was my favorite one...I used rulers to make a grid so I knew where to start and stop each shape, then did random angles for the vertical lines to make each shape...fun!

random diagonal lines...

straight lines...

hmmm...

horizontal zig zags...

random straight lines...

random crazy straight lines...

For the outside borders I made a little space pantograph with a rocket, an alien spaceship, a planet, stars and the swirly things are supposed to be black holes. Let's just say the stars were not my favorite part. I could not make them even for the life of me! Oh well, overall it's cute, right?

The pattern recommended using 1/4 inch black buttons for the centers of all the little alien eyes, which I had originally planned on doing...but then I thought better of it and decided to just use black acrylic paint mixed with fabric medium and it worked out well--and was so much faster than sewing on a bunch of little buttons! I'm so happy this quilt is finally done!